A probe will be launched to one of them
NEW YORK, November 24. /tass/. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch on Wednesday the DART probe (Double Asteroid Redirection Test - "Experiment to change the orbit of a double asteroid"), which is designed to test the first of its kind protection of the Earth from potentially dangerous space objects.
The spacecraft will be delivered to space by the launch vehicle of the American company SpaceX Falcon 9, which will launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 22:21 on November 23 (09:21 Moscow Time on November 24).
After the spacewalk, the DART probe will separate from the rocket and "start chasing" the Didymus-Dimorph double asteroid, which, like the Earth, orbits the Sun. As expected, the device will collide with the smaller of them - a Dimorph - at a speed of about 24 thousand km / h in the fall of 2022. As a result of the collision, the orbit of the 160-meter Dimorph, which orbits a larger Didymus with a length of 760 m, will have to deviate "by a fraction of a percent". Scientists expect that this will be enough for them to be able to record the deviation using telescopes from Earth. The purpose of the experiment is to work out a technique by which, in the future, in the event of the appearance of asteroids that are really dangerous to the planet, specialists could change the trajectory of their movement.
To operate all the probe's systems, it will be equipped with the latest generation of solar panels, which this year began to be installed instead of the old ones on the International Space Station. Also on board the probe will be placed a small satellite LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging Asteroids - "Light Italian satellite for photographing asteroids"), developed by Argotec. According to scientists' plans, 10 days before the date of the collision, DART will release it for photographing the asteroid. In addition, the LICIACube will become an additional means of fixing the collision of the probe with the Dimorph.
In 2016, NASA created the Office for the Coordination of Measures to Protect the Earth from Asteroids. Within the framework of this program, asteroids and comets that could threaten the Earth are being searched in near-Earth space within 48 million km from Earth, data is being collected on their sizes, orbits and chemical composition, as well as an analysis of the possible consequences of their fall to Earth.
